


Editing the code

by MemoryMonkey



Category: Log Horizon
Genre: Akatsuki best girl, F/M, Fluff, Slightly want it to be Akatsuki x Tetora but it's not, Tetora best Tetora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23264875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemoryMonkey/pseuds/MemoryMonkey
Summary: Akatsuki's crush on Shiroe is growing and everyone apart from him knows it.When Akatsuki accidentally breaks the game and gains the admins' god powers, her attempts to talk to Shiroe are even more awkward than before.
Relationships: Akatsuki/Shiroe (Log Horizon)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 33





	1. Admin

"Hey Akatsuki, why don't you give it a try?" Shiroe asked happily, fiddling with his robe in a rare moment of relaxing and socialisation. All of Log Horizon was sat around a campfire and winding down for the evening, discussing the new solo dungeon that they had just discovered.

"M-me?" Akatsuki asked, instantly flustered. Firstly, Shiroe, Naotsugu and Nyanta had all tried and failed to complete it, so it was flattering to think Shiroe thought she could. Secondly, there was something about the uncommon lightness in his voice that set her nerves on fire with excitement and joy. There was no denying it - she had a huge crush on Shiroe and everybody apart from Shiroe himself seemed to know.

"Yeah. You're an assassin, you're a great duelist, you're the best at stealth I know. I think you've got the best odds of pulling this off."

Akatsuki faced the ground, her face turning red. No matter how much she told herself she couldn't do it if no one else could, she knew now that after hearing what Shiroe had said, she couldn't not do it.

And she won.

The boss room was surprisingly small and cramped for what it was. With elegantly carved stone pillars on the walls leading up to the arched roof, the tiling on the floor coming undone in places and leaving dirty patches of soil and gravel and rotted hints of wooden furniture littering the floor, the boss chamber was essentially a very long corridor.

Atatsuki panted, catching her breath on one knee - she had beaten the boss. Solo dungeons were a part of the Novasphere Pioneers DLC and were rumoured to be extremely difficult, so Akatsuki let out a proud smile. She had died once and only once and Shiroe would surely be impressed.

After a moment, she cast her gaze to the boss's body in front of her to loot it. It was a Samurai automaton but an extremely fast one, with a lot of different abilities and high damage. Luckily it wasn't very tough for a boss, otherwise she never would have won before dying again. It felt more like fighting another player than a boss, but she had managed.

**[ Ring of the duelist - increases your chance to successfully parry an opponent's strike by 50% ]**

She nodded, allowing herself another grin. Enchanted loot is always the best loot. Following a brief check around the chamber for secret entrances, loot or anything else, the shinobi concluded she was done in the dungeon and would return to her master's side in the guild, her excitement building to see how he would praise her upon her return.

For someone who was stood by Shiroe's side whenever she could afford to be, she got surprisingly little affection from him. She knew it was just that Shiroe wasn't a particularly touchy-feely person, but ever so occasionally he would put his hand on her shoulder or ruffle her hair, and while she always wanted to be treated more like the adult she was, it would always make her happier than she could describe.

She briefly rested her hand on a wall, caught up thinking about her master again.

Only when she touched the wall, her hand went straight through it.

She frowned in confusion, slowly extending her whole arm into the wall.

"What the..." She had never seen this kind of secret entrance before, and her tracking abilities hadn't revealed anything here.

Curious, she took a breath and poked her head through - and gasped.

She could see the whole dungeon she had just travelled through as if it was the only thing that existed in an infinite void. Whenever she turned her head, the rendered map left images of itself on the backdrop as if there wasn't even a skybox there at all.

"No way..." Akatsuki muttered, leaning in further to look around. It was undoubtedly a glitch in the game - they had probably just made a mistake in the collision maps of the walls or something, because Akatsuki, for the first time ever, found herself out of the map.

It was terrifying and exciting - even though it reminded her that she was living in a video game, it felt completely and totally real. If she got stuck here, what if there was no way to get out? Would she be stuck forever?

She shook her head, pushing the through away. She knew she could use her abilities to get back onto the map, or even force herself to respawn at the start of the map if she had to. With that in mind, she took a careful step and found the ground beneath her feet. She took a second step and third, and found herself completely immersed in the strange reality-bending void around her, scanning it carefully in amazement.

Then something caught her eye.

There was another room in the distance - one that clearly wasn't linked to the rest of the dungeon. There was no teleportation system either, so there was technically no way to get to it.

Except for glitching out of the map, Akatsuki thought and grinned, setting off towards it at a jog. The experience was almost hypnotic and weirdly relaxing - the air felt completely neutral and there was no ambience at all, like she was in the vacuum of space. When she arrived, the room shared a similar aesthetic to the rest of the dungeon albeit less decorated.

She poked at the wall and breathed a sigh of relief when she felt her hand going straight through, so she stepped into the room and looked around once again, her heart beating hard in her chest. Something at the back of her head made her excited about this being her own secret area - perhaps she could bring Shiroe here and he would somehow use it to figure out more about the fundamental existence of the game.

The room was completely bare apart from one wall, where a small computer was lodged into the wall.

There were no computers in Elder Tale.

Whatsmore, the computer had only one button.

Akatsuki paused, her fingers centimetres away from automatically pressing it.

What would Shiroe do?

Akatsuki took a breath.

And pressed the button.

Immediately, she had a notification. Excited, she opened her menu and saw a new indicator in her profile.

**[Admin]**

"Admin?" She mouthed in confusion, frowning again. She probably looked like Shiroe right now with how wrinkled her face was getting. "What the heck does that mean? What does an admin do?" She wished Shiroe was here. He would help her make sense of this.

Scrolling through her menus, Akatsuki found nothing new at first.

Then she noticed a number of new abilities under her abilities section which she didn't look at much, as she had memorised them and was used to activating them using muscle memory now.

As her eyes skimmed over them, they slowly widened in disbelief.

**[Add ability]**  
**[Add spell]**  
**[Allocate property]**  
**[Alter attribute]**  
**[Alter skill]**  
**[Ceacefire]**  
**[Change appearance]**  
**[Change class]**  
**[Change server]**  
**[Create ability]**  
**[Create class]**  
**[Create dungeon]**  
**[Create entity]**  
**[Create event]**  
**[Create item]**  
**[Create object]**  
**[Create quest]**  
**[Create spell]**  
**[Create structure]**  
**[Create terrain]**  
**[Debug mode]**  
**[Guild settings]**  
**[Invincibility]**  
**[Invisibility]**  
**[Kill]**  
**[Modify entity]**  
**[No clip]**  
**[Lock]**  
**[Pacify]**  
**[Pause]**  
**[Server stats]**  
**[Set event]**  
**[Set season]**  
**[Set time]**  
**[Slow/increase time]**  
**[Spawn entity]**  
**[Teleport]**  
**[Toggle processing]**  
**[Unlock]**  
**[Weather settings]**  
**[Zero cooldowns]**

With each new item she read, she felt panic set in more.

What on Earth had she just found?

For a solid minute, Akatsuki was rooted to the spot, staring wide-eyed at her menu one part of her told her to experiment with everything and another part of her screamed at her to get Shiroe. If this was real, then Shiroe was definitely the person that should be in control of it. But this was real life. Sometimes the border was blurred but with millions of people living in Elder Tale, it was real enough.

Skim reading the commands, she picked out two details: Firstly, there was no function to make anybody else an admin so if she wanted to bring Shiroe into this, she would have to find this room again with him. Secondly, there didn't appear to be anything to do with returning to the real world.

But that didn't matter - for the moment, she had to know if this was real.

She couldn't glitch out of the wall she came in from - so probably they were one-way walls designed to keep players in the bounds of the game and nothing else. At least this would be a good opportunity to test out the teleport command. Selecting it, Akatsuki was suddenly presented with not just a map of the dungeon, or the prefecture surrounding it, but the entirety of the Japanese server.

Her excitement kept building - her skin was tingling with anticipation, like a child in a candy store except the candy store was the whole world and the candy was the power to do pretty much anything. Deciding not to step too far yet, she selected the exit to the dungeon and immediately appeared there. No cooldown, no mana cost.

"Damn," she smirked, stepping out of the dungeon and breathing in the fresh air. The area around the dungeon was quite far from any civilisation, a large open plane in a valley with a lake one side and a forest the other.

She would return to the guild to tell Shiroe she had beaten the dungeon - then speak to him in private about this. He would be able to make the most out of it, after all.


	2. Bean buns

A night had passed between Shiroe's recommendation and Akatsuki setting off to attempt the dungeon - it was late in the evening when the suggestion was made, and she knew that the dungeon would take some time. Sure enough, it was mid afternoon when Akatsuki appeared at the doors to the Log Horizon guild building, with an unmissable smile on her face.

It was a rare pleasure to find Shiroe outside of his room not doing paperwork, so Akatsuki felt blessed to spot him sat in the central area reading a book.

"My lord," she chirped in an uncharacteristically bright tone, waving to him after pushing the door open.

"Akatsuki?" He asked. His eyes widened - noticing the bright look on her face, he could only jump to one assumption.

"I did it," she said unceremoniously, holding the enchanted ring she found for Shiroe to see, who looked briefly surprised.

"I knew you could do it, Akatsuki," he said warmly, extending an arm to ruffle her hair.

That was the moment she had been looking forward to the most, more than anything else. Shiroe's genuine smile, solid eye contact, his hand - it all accumulated into her heart thumping hard in her chest and a happy sense of giddiness.

"What now?" Naotsugu shouted, bursting through the door. "Pipsqueak actually did it?"

Akatsuki jumped back, momentarily off guard under the warmth of Shiroe's affection. Naotsugu noticed and smirked as she cursed under her breath, embarrassed.

"What do you mean, actually did it?" Shiroe raised one eyebrow. "Didn't you know she could?"

"I dunno, it was way too hard for me," he muttered, frowning. "Good job, I guess."

Akatsuki held back her rebuke at his nickname as he left the room, promptly returning her attention to Shiroe as it was just the two of them in the room again.

"The boss killed me once. It was a really strange boss, it felt more like fighting a player, you know?"

Shiroe awkwardly shuffled, clearing his throat.

"Well, actually I never got to the boss."

"Eh?"

"I'm an enchanter scribe. They're crap at solo dungeons."

"R-right, sorry-"

"No, it's fine! I'm really impressed, Akatsuki! Naotsugu had to die a lot of times before realising he couldn't win," he smirked, moving back to ruffle Akatsuki's hair like he did before the guardian walked in.

"What's going on here?" Tetra asked slyly, appearing behind Shiroe and once again startling Akatsuki, who bounced back from embarrassment.

"You didn't attempt the solo dungeon, did you Tetra?" Shiroe asked.

"Pfft, no," he responded. "An idol doesn't-"

"Yeah, I figured," Shiroe cut him off. "Akatsuki got it."

"Ayyy, my boi!" Tetra giggled, trying to slap Akatsuki on the back but finding his hand promptly dodged. "Is this gonna give you the courage to do... the chat?" He asked, not so subtly gesturing towards a very confused Shiroe.

"Shut _up_ ," Akatsuki hissed.

"No? Get to it quickly, poor old Shiroe's gets lonely up in his room you know~" he teased before making his graceful exit.

Akatsuki huffed, resisting the urge to stamp her foot. Shiroe raised a confused eyebrow at her but she just shook her head. To Akatsuki's surprise, Shiroe once again placed his hand on her shoulder and resumed his previous affections.

"My lord," she said happily, deciding to lean forwards and hug him. Strangely, Tetra had actually given her courage.

She swore if one more person-

"Hey Shiroe!" Minori yapped, appearing from one of the doors, bounding towards them - Akatsuki panicked and, fuelled partially by frustration and partially by desperate confusion as the other girl noticed her and stared daggers into her, she opened the admin tab and selected a random ability.

And suddenly, the room was filled with bean buns. Akatsuki was submerged to her hips. She yelped in surprise, clinging to the ceiling as Shiroe visibly recoiled and Minori screamed. There was an extremely tense silence as Naotsugu, Tetra and Nyanta came running into the room to investigate, only to be swept away by a tide of bean buns as they opened the doors.

"What..." Shiroe whispered in absolute bafflement, picking one up.

"...Shit." Akatsuki muttered under her breath as outside she heard Naotsugu and Tetra falling about laughing, Minori frozen in place as Touya arrived on the scene and took on a similar reaction.

"Sh-Shiroe," Naotsugu laughed. "What the hell kind of a spell is this?"

"I didn't do anything," he frowned. "I think."

"Whyd'ya drop everything in your inventory, Akatsuki?" Tetra joked, rolling about on the floor, clutching his sides.

"Shiroe, what just happened?" Minori asked, regaining her composure.

"I have absolutely no idea," he responded slowly, scanning the room. Akatsuki had removed herself from the ceiling and was sat guiltily on top of a bookshelf. "Akatsuki, have you ever seen anything like this?" He asked with a hint of entertainment, picking one up.

  
  
"N-no, my lord." Shiroe inspected the bun closely. It was a completely normal bean bun. Suddenly he straightened himself out and adjusted his glasses. "Akatsuki, please search the perimeter for any magic user level 90 or above."

"Yes my lord," she said quickly, taking the opportunity to leave the room.

"Naotsugu, I need you to go and find Marielle and ask if she has any experience of this kind of thing. Minori go with him, your skills will be useful if she does have something," she heard him say as she obediently started searching the perimeter, knowing fully well she wouldn't find anything.

She paused, seeing Naotsugu and Minori setting off for the Cresent Moon Alliance guildhouse and shaking her head.

Once she had found a suitably secluded area in the forest on the outskirts of Log Horizon territory, she sat down and opened the admin abilities again, cursing her impulsiveness and scanning for something she could possibly use to fix the situation.

But what could she do? She couldn't exactly remove people's memories, just effect what happened in-game. She could probably remove them but the damage was done, now everyone though some high level magic user was pranking them. She sighed, scratching her head and reading the list of abilities again when one caught her eye. There was no rewind time option, obviously.

**[Pause]**

She stared at it, her fingers twitching. Curious, she pressed it.

And true to its description, the world paused. Akatsuki gasped, the wind on her skin freezing in place, birds hanging motionless in the air, swaying trees and grass turned into statues. She moved her hand about experimentally and she was fine - but there was a dense, eerie silence and stillness everywhere, somewhat similar to when she had glitched out of the map.

Akatsuki stood up and made her way back into the guildhouse, pausing when she saw Naotsugu and Minori just leaving the guild perimeter when she had frozen time. It was surreal.

Entering the guild, she saw Touya standing in the middle of the bean bun room with one half way into his mouth, his other hand holding Tetra at bay, who was clearly trying to take his one. 

Wandering through the silent guildhouse, Akatsuki saw Nyanta in the kitchen holding up one of the aforementioned buns with sparkles in his eyes, Serera by his side - it looked like they were going to dissect them to try to find out more about them.

She decided to see if Shiroe was on his room, noticing Rudy and Isuzu talking in her room as she passed by the dorm on her way to the top floor. And finally, Shiroe's room. The door was unlocked but that didn't matter as Akatsuki glided in easily.

She paused, seeing him hunched over his desk with a slightly disturbed expression on his face. On a piece of paper he was writing notes, regarding how it could be some kind of glitch in the game, to see if anyone is experiencing things like it - essentially, he wondered if it could be used to find a way out of the game.

Quite some time passed (or none at all) until Akatsuki shook her head, asking herself what she was even doing. She would return to where she froze time then unfreeze it, resolving to avoid using admin abilities unless it was for something important.

Unfreezing time was like breathing after holding your breath. She sighed as birdsong entered her ears, even recoiling slightly as very gentle wind suddenly hit her. Naotsugu and Minori continued down the path as if nothing had happened.

That being said, maybe Akatsuki could have some fun with the abilities if she was careful with them.


	3. Experiments

Loyal to Shiroe's instruction, Akatsuki had completed a search of the guild's perimeter and found nothing out of the ordinary. After deciding that it had been a suitably long time, Akatsuki guiltily trudged back into the guildhall. Minori had since returned from the Cresent Moon guildhall saying that neither Marielle nor Henriette could shed any light on the situation, though Marielle really wanted to come and see. Due to the potentially delicate nature of the issue, Minori had suggested that she didn't, earning an appreciative nod from Shiroe. Naotsugu hadn't returned yet.

Akatsuki didn't often linger - people mostly saw her glued to her lord's side and as such, they didn't think much about what she did by herself. While she often had a plethora of things to busy herself with and now more than ever, she found herself strangely lost on what to do. When it became apparent she wasn't needed at the moment as Shiroe and Nyanta continued their investigations, she was left to somehow explain that she had caused it.

But Shiroe was busy at the moment, she thought while furrowing her brow and pacing the top of the guild building's roof. It was getting dark and a slight wind was picking up but she paid it no attention as she sat down and once again scrolled through the new options available to her.

"Create dungeon," she whispered to herself, taken in immediately by the prospect. Akatsuki stood up, deciding to travel some distance away from the guildhall before trying anything else. Leaving a quick message in the guild chat to say she was going to the plains to train again, she set off into the night, travelling the normal way instead of teleporting.

Somehow the plains managed to loom and look enticing both at once - it was dark and imposing but it was a canvas. Akatsuki opened her menu again, hovering her finger over 'create dungeon'. Cautiously, she reached out and pressed the button.

There was a satisfying sound effect, similar to when you opened your UI but no so familiar. Immediately, a blank template appeared in front of her. Akatsuki narrowed her eyes at the various menus, tabs and buttons - lists upon lists of options. As it turned out, it was surprisingly complicated.

Akatsuki leaned in, a small smile growing before a gust of wind barrelled down the plains, bringing a tide of leaves with it. Extremes of weather like this weren't uncommon in the plains at this season, but it still caught Akatsuki mildly off guard and caused her to shiver. On impulse, she brought up the weather settings and turned off the wind.

Once again she was struck by the reality as the wind instantly stopped. The whole plain paused, holding its breath. The ninja once again felt guilty as an eerie silence took over, before quickly turning her attention back to the dungeon - it could be whatever she wanted. The dungeon could stretch up to the ceiling of the world or have a pit down into some infinite abyss, the monsters could give you enough XP to power level you to level one hundred, it could look like the Log Horizon guild-house or not even an interior at all.

Just as she had created an open space (which had taken some time to figure out), Akatsuki noticed something else - a green light on her UI shining starkly against the night but staring right at her. It was an 'enter dungeon' button. She paused only briefly, with wide eyes, before doing the only rational thing and pressing the button.

The world around her warped suddenly - it was different to teleportation - it was different to dying and coming back to the world which was, in itself, a highly shocking and confusing experience in many ways. Where once the grass plains stretched around her, she found herself stood in a blank, untextured stone room, her UI displaying where she was in the tiny dungeon she had created.

"Oh my god..." She whispered weakly, stepping backwards and taking in the enormous, plain stone square she was stood on, her previous resolution only to use the admin abilities if she needed to quickly dying in her mind. Her heart was racing in a way that almost nothing compared to - it was like one of the times in the real world where she had been playing a game and realised you could edit the levels or make your own, but now... She was torn between joyful excitement and fear.

Everything set out before her was complicated - seemingly needlessly so, too. After she had exited the dungeon and resumed to building it and after much faffing, she had learned how to place a wall wonkily across one wall, jutting unceremoniously out of the ground. She wiped her brow despite how sweaty it wasn't in the cool night air. Broken briefly from her focus by the song of the night birds in the forest not too far from her, her eyes were drawn to the area around them, to a bright twinkling night sky and movement of wild animals in the bushes. Her eyes darted back to the enormous, plain structure that didn't at all belong where it was, freezing up when she realised than anyone or everyone nearby could walk past and see it.

Her eyes bore into the structure that was her responsibility - if not her fault. She gulped, scanning quickly through the dungeon editor for some kind of feature to save or load but it was surprisingly difficult, hidden through multiple layers of UI and copious numbers of options.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before she managed to save it to a long list of empty blueprints and remove this copy from the terrain. She was hesitant to pause time just to work on it, but it felt like, if she could find a good place where she wouldn't be disturbed, she could end up spending a lot of time on this.

Just then, she was startled by a ringing from her menu - a call. Quickly she darted her eyes up to answer it, hesitating briefly when she saw that it was from Shiroe.

"M-my lord?" She answered quickly, reflexively standing up straight.

"Hey, um," came his voice through the transmitter, slightly distorted as it always was with long-distance communication with a trace of awkwardness to it. "I just wanted to check up on you."

Akatsuki frowned. This hadn't happened before.

"Check up on me?" She parroted.

"Well something pretty weird happened today," Shiroe chuckled. "And you were caught right in the middle of it, by the looks of things," he continued. Akatsuki froze guiltily.

"Seemed like it," she mumbled, her eyes now anywhere apart from his icon.

"Minori was pretty freaked out, so I had to make sure you were okay," he concluded. Akatsuki gulped, nodding her head as a response as she found herself suddenly struggling to find the right words. "Hey, Akatsuki?" He asked.

"Yeah, fine!" She squeaked before taking a deep breath and sitting down on the grass. "Look, it's been... Yeah, it's really, really weird. I don't know how to respond," she spoke slowly, as though she was trying to gather the strength to tell him what had happened. Each second she didn't would make it worse, after all.

"Right," Shiroe answered. She could practically see the cogs whirring in his brain, knowing that the pause was him trying to think of a response. Despite their proximity, she and Shiroe very rarely spoke closely, or about the things they think and feel. "I guess it's a large world, huh?" Shiroe eventually said. "There are still things we don't know. Kinda surprising."

"Very surprising," Akatsuki quietly corrected him.

"Well..." Shiroe's sigh came through the intercom with a surge of static. "Log Horizon is a place where you can talk about this stuff. Take care of yourself." And with that, he was gone, the call ended and Akatsuki was blushing. Uncharacteristically awkward of him, but it could only be expected that now things would only get weirder and weirder.

Now sat down, Akatsuki leaned backwards, gently trying to exhale the stress from her body as she stared upwards. A slight cloud coverage had rolled overhead and dimmed the starlight that filled the pitch-black sky. The sun had set some time ago, and while Akatsuki wasn't exactly easy to keep track of in the evenings, she could understand why Shiroe would be worried if she was out of the guildhall for so long.

With her eyes lingering on the dungeon editor, Akatsuki closed her menu and jumped up to her feet.

"I'll get back to you," she resolved before turning her back to the plains she had worked in and setting her sights in the direction of the guildhall. With each passing second the temptation to use teleport grew, but she had a sinking feeling that it would be better not to use it. Her reaction to everything apparently included being increasingly jumpy - each rustling bush or critter that scuttled past her caused her to jump, god forbid Henrietta trying to sneak up on her again.

The modicum of relief she usually felt when the guildhall came into view paled in comparison to the gush she now felt, more than eager to step inside. Much like the night before, she found herself being greeted late in the day by her guildmates upon entering, though she was disappointed to find that Shiroe was, as usual, vacant. Also unlike the night before, she remembered to use one of the guild building's side entrances as the central area was currently off-limits - at least using the main door was.

"Is Naotsugu back yet?" She tiredly asked Nyanta as she passed him in a corridor past a living space.

"Not yet, nya, I understand he'll return here tomorrow. He said something about investigating further around Cresent Moon's area."

"Sure," Akatsuki smiled wryly. She knew that he and Marielle got along well and could pass no small amount of time together if left to their own devices.

"Shiroe has sent words to a number of guild masters regarding what happened, and Michitaka of the Marine Organization offered to come and inspect our new stock tomorrow," Nyanta explained to Akatsuki, who had paused in the centre of the hallway. She only needed to take a look through the open door beside her to see into the large central area with its high ceiling and the tree making its way through the several floors - the bottom floor flooded with the aforementioned stock. "So you can be expecting some commotion."

"Thanks," the ninja responded, suppressing a yawn before making her way up to the higher floors. She stood still, paralysed, outside of Shiroe's door for some time. She could hear the inevitable scratching of quills on parchment from within, again pleading with herself to knock and explain what had happened, but lacking the courage, fearing... Repercussions? He was hardly going to punish her. He wasn't going to take away the power either. Still, Akatsuki ended up shying away from the door as she had many, many times before unbeknownst to her lord, and made her way up to her own room.

She was tired and tomorrow was going to be busy- she had a lot to think about and a lot to try. Uncharacteristically, Akatsuki was asleep soon after her head hit the pillow.


	4. Menu

Akatsuki had gone to sleep earlier than normal and woke up before everyone else, as she usually did. The morning dew from the humid night was still settling and the early bird song had begun not long ago, prompting Akatsuki to quickly sit up, her eyes already open wide in scanning the room for any threats as many years of a ninja lifestyle had taught her. Moments later she relaxed slightly, slumping down on her bed and leaning back against the wall.

She was already dressed in her adventuring gear because, the night before, she had collapsed into her bed before any of her normal night preparations. The events of the day before were still slightly hazy, as though she couldn't be sure if it was real as opposed to a weird dream, but after a quick check of her menu, she confirmed that all of the admin abilities remained.

She gulped. Several floors below were thousands upon thousands of red bean buns. Beans that were, albeit delicious, cheated into existence by Akatsuki by accident.

"Oh right," she grumbled, remembering that Shiroe was suddenly up in a panic about what it could mean or where it could have come from. They'd be having stock marketers and traders entering their guildhall to investigate and Shiroe would likely be working more than ever now - and after a quick check with her tracker skills, Akatsuki confirmed that Shiroe was, in fact, sitting at his desk writing. God, he looked like he hadn't slept for the entire night.

Akatsuki stood up, patting down her clothing and stretching out her shoulders before nodding to herself. Whether or not she could actually start talking to Shiroe yet, she was still his ninja and was always at his side unless he sent her away so, in a quiet purple streak, Akatsuki was gone, now silently perching on the shelf high above her lord's head behind him.

He didn't seem to notice her. She was used to it. A lot of time could pass when Akatsuki wasn't quite sure whether she was looking at an adventurer or an automaton who writes and writes, but the man occasionally muttered something to himself. Only if he piqued Akatsuki's interest enough to cause her to voice her curiosity would he realise she was there, always surprised even though he likely knew she would be here at some point.

Oh, there it was. His head had met the desk. When he stayed up all night, this usually ended up happening before he took himself to bed.

"My Lord, perhaps you should consider going to sleep," Akatsuki voiced. And of course, a little shocked shiver met Shiroe as he perked up, spinning around. Akatsuki inwardly smiled at his disgruntled expression and messy hair as he stared blankly at her.

"O-oh, right," he eventually conceded, remembering what sleep was. "I'm afraid I still have a number of letters to write. Don't worry Akatsuki, I'll be done soon."

"My lord, I know what _I'll be done soon_ means," Akatsuki deadpanned.

"No, I really mean it this time," Shiroe said through a yawn, placing what he had written on a large stack to his right before picking up a piece of paper from a slightly shorter stack to his left and setting it out in front of him.

"I'm inclined to disagree," Akatsuki mumbled, hopping deftly down and standing at his side before electing to lean her elbows on the desk so she could meet his eyes without him having to turn his body. "Shiroe. Your writing quality decreases when you're exhausted."

"Not exhausted," the man slurred, promptly losing his grip on the pen and dropping it. After instinctively reaching out to grab it, Akatsuki's hand met his, who had the same reaction and despite her skill in keeping calm and acting appropriately if they were ambushed by adventurers or monsters, the light touch robbed her of any control of her arm. "Uh, sorry," Shiroe obliviously mumbled, grabbing weakly at the pen and picking it out of her tiny hand as Akatsuki stood silently.

Seconds later he had stopped writing completely, staring blankly at the paper.

"Look, you're going to sleep whether you like it or not," Akatsuki insisted, pulling his chair backwards and him with it.

"Hey-"

"Come on," the ninja cut him off, tugging at his sleeve.

Shiroe turned towards her again, a hard to read expression on his face before he silently resigned, wordlessly standing up. Akatsuki didn't do this often (this time she was fuelled particularly by guilt) but she was surprised still at Shiroe's willingness. Maybe tiredness made him complacent. He rarely outwardly showed his tiredness after all.

"'Kay," he finally grumbled, standing up from his desk and groaning slightly at the negative response from his legs that hadn't been used all night. All-nighter-induced muscle weirdness was apparently a thing in this game. Akatsuki followed nervously until he paused at his own door, looking down at her eyes again. "Thank you," he said simply before disappearing inside.

Akatsuki smiled briefly but her eyes fell to the floor. It was just the two of them but she had let him slip away again.

Nyanta had asked their guests to enter through the side door.

After Akatsuki had told him (who had woken up not much later than Shiroe had gone to sleep - that being earlier than most) that Shiroe had only just fallen asleep, he had elected not to bother their guild master and to alert everyone to leave him be until he woke up. He ended up acting in the scribe's place when Michitaka had arrived with a few specialists by his side.

Used to staying close to Shiroe in all his meetings, regrettably excluding the round table ones, Akatsuki found herself close by Nyanta's side as he greeted the Marine organisation, opening the door and stepping aside to allow them access into the guild. Only somewhat bugged by the temptation to check on Shiroe, she found herself joining in on the meeting, noticing the younger members of the guild occasionally watching from higher floors as the group entered the main chamber.

Michitaka's eyes thinned, perplexed, as they feasted on the sight beneath them - apparently, some attempt had been made since last Akatsuki had been here the evening before, likely by Nyanta, to organise or at least slightly tidy up the new mass of bean buns, but it was ultimately a fruitless task. They didn't just cover every surface but buried them deeply.

"What in the..." He grumbled, quickly turning to the staircase to get a closer look. "I got the overview from Shiroe, but since you were here, can you tell me what you saw?" He asked, the small group of men behind him, presumably guildmates, pulling out notepads and quills. Akatsuki followed with her eyes, electing to take the more unconventional route that took her mostly onto pieces of furniture between floors that kept her close to Nyanta but not in the way. She could tell that Nyanta was slightly tense - as a stand-in for Shiroe, there was a lot of responsibility on him and no doubt the Marine agency would try to dig up something on Shiroe if he wasn't studying in his office - not that anyone assumed they were harbouring malicious intentions. Still, as someone who had grown so accustomed to the swashbuckler's casual demeanour, Akatsuki knew he was ready to defend the guild master.

The small company, Nyanta included, had soon reached the bottom and were forced to huddle awkwardly near the bottom of the staircase before the pastries took over. Akatsuki was tucked away on the floor above watching them but growing increasingly bored. They had since said everything they needed to, and Nyanta was patiently watching over the group and answering occasional questions while Michitaka's men thoroughly investigated the buns. It would have been funny if Akatsuki wasn't so on edge about the whole ordeal.

Patient as she was, Akatsuki grew increasingly impressed with the chief as he stood still and helped the others for what seemed like hours on end - easily long enough for Akatsuki to get bored and stop paying attention. Odd how she could watch Shiroe writing for a lot longer than this without getting bored.

Even so, she had idly opened up her menu again and was scanning through her new abilities to see if there was anything she could use to pass the time or just have a little fun - or possibly even help Shiroe out some way. She had, of course, been regularly checking the room to make sure that no one saw, but just as she had reached the bottom of the list and was about to check behind her again, she sensed a sudden presence behind her back.

"Huh? Server stats? Set event? Set season?" Akatsuki hadn't spun around so fast in her life as she heard Tetora's voice right next to her hear, only to see the idol leaning forwards in confusion.

"A-h-hey, Tetora!" Akatsuki offered weakly while backing off and quickly hitting a wall.

"Why are you acting so suspicious?" Tetora pouted, placing his hands on his hips. "Don't you trust me? And what's with those abilities? I haven't seen anything like them." Though the reality seemed absurd, she could sense the gears turning in the idol's head.

"N-no, they're-" Akatsuki stuttered. "They're not real! They're just, um... I found a weird joke item on a monster that lets you edit your menu display!"

"What!? That's awesome!" Tetora grinned. "Lemme see lemme see!"

Akatsuki froze.

"Uh, yeah," she stammered, opening her menu again, fighting the urge to just disappear. She couldn't let the person to find her out be Tetora. She couldn't be found out, she should just go and tell Shiroe, but...

"Akatsuki?" Tetora asked quietly.

If the only way that Akatsuki would be able to tell Shiroe herself was for said item to actually exist, then she would make it exist.

"Yeah, sorry," she answered, scrolling down her menu and pressing pause again and taking a deep sigh of relief as Tetora instantly froze in place.

"Okay..." Akatsuki mumbled, leaning against the wall. "Create item," she spoke, picking the option and thinning her eyes at the sprawling mass of options that was her anything-but-user-friendly interface. "Uhh, what have I got myself into?" She muttered, falling down against the wall until her knees gently met her chest. How was she supposed to figure this out for Tetora without unpausing? She'd have to learn this by herself with everything else literally on hold...

She cast her eyes down to the bean buns on the floor below again. With every second she kept this to herself, she made more mistakes and wasn't achieving anything. Prideful at the worst times yet nervous wreck that she was, she was likely one of the worst people in the guild for this to happen to. While she shivered at the prospect of the wrong kind of person finding this, it brought a lot of self-doubt onto her.

As she was idly skim-reading the flavour text on the buns, an idea struck her. Recently, the flavour text on items was actually becoming real. Cursed weapons were cursing their wielders, and so on.

The looked back to her create item menu, and set to work, creating an item with a generic name and appearance - fortunately, there were a number of unused objects and sprites and she could easily pick a miscellaneous hand-held device, and frowned before entering its flavour text.

**[Allows the user to change any text on their menu]**

She sighed before creating the item and adding it to her inventory. Akatsuki hummed in amazement as it appeared there without a moment's delay, and she took a breath before equipping it.

And by some miracle, it worked. Almost as though her raw will and intention had driven the item to behave as it did, she suddenly found an option appearing by each piece of text (which horribly convoluted the display but she wasn't complaining) to change what it displayed.

Akatsuki looked, not even knowing what cosmic force to thank before clearing her throat and unpausing the game.

"Here," she said quickly, holding out the item she had just created and smiling when Tetora didn't seem to notice anything.

"No way," the idol exclaimed, stars appearing in his eyes. "You don't mind if I borrow this, right?"

"Ehh," Akatsuki hesitated, rubbing her forehead. "No, that's fine," she decided, glancing down towards Nyanta and their guests, who were still examining the buns.

"Sweet! Thanks!" He sang, and made his very quick exit. Surprisingly agile for a cleric, but that was how he was.

Akatsuki sighed. That was probably a mistake.

"I guess that's all there is to it, huh?" Michitaka's exclamation brought Akatsuki back to attention, where she cast her eyes back down to the group below her.

"That's what our experiments revealed too," Nyanta answered. "Thoroughly normal, quite delicious."

"Do you mind if we grab a handful of these?" Michitaka asked. "There's more we could do back in the guild, but I doubt it'll reveal anything.

"I don't see why not," Nyanta replied. "And I appreciate you coming here, by the way. I hope you can understand that this matter has brought Shiroe no small deal of stress."

"Yeah, trust him to get worked up over anything that gives him the opportunity," Michitaka sighed. "I was definitely surprised to find he was asleep when we got here."

"Well he certainly didn't get any sleep while the sun was down," Nyanta answered calmly.

Akatsuki fazed out while their brief small talk came to an end and they saw themselves out of the guild. If Shiroe was still asleep, now would be a good time to travel back to the plains and try creating a few more things.


	5. The Ascot crab

"Where were we?" Akatsuki asked, surveying the plains in front of her and pulling the menu out in front of her. The thrill that the extended abilities menu brought was still enough to override her previous nervousness - here and now she was going to make a proper dungeon.

Opening the blueprints menu again, her eyes trailed down to the one item she had added - the giant stone slab of a floor with one precarious wall on its edge that she had been working on earlier. She couldn't help but sigh as she took in what a puny thing it was for the time she had put into it, but all the same how astonishingly real and present it could be for such a silly shape.

"Right," she whispered, picturing the structure with similar edges. After taking a moment to pause the game again - its sheer oddity not lost on her - and recalling the process she'd gone through last time, set about creating it.

Slowly, through the hours, she worked. Soon her eyes were strained from reading the small text, her legs tiring from the idle standing. A weird, growing assortment of shapes grew in front of her - a crater-like shape, hundreds of metres in diameter, surrounded a large central tower. She didn't know where she was going with it, nor was she sure of how many hours had passed, but she was proud of her creation as she improvised. As its unmarked grey mass of slopes and planes stared back at her, she considered that maybe some day she could add it to the world to let people explore, or make it a dungeon. Of course, it would still take a lot of work until it was presentable.

Addicting though it was, she needed to stop. Her tired brain pulsed with strain, with nausea from the infinite stillness around her and the oddly hot still air. Akatsuki saved the blueprint again, checking meticulously that all of her work had been recorded, before cautiously deleting it and blinking as the full valley came back into view.

When she unfroze time, she gasped. A breeze appeared out of nowhere and hit her so suddenly that, though it was meagre, she shivered and staggered. Birds tweeted, distant water shimmered. She had forgotten that the clouds were moving and not just still normally.

"Perhaps I should head back and check if Master Shiroe has woken up yet..." She mused, her eyes drifting down the new abilities menu again, so much still undiscovered and at her fingers. She had always been distracted by the "create entity" option.

She curiously tapped it, falling back into the soft grass behind her as another menu appeared. Monsters were separated into normal, party and raid rank monsters. She selected normal rank, then picked the first item on the list: ascot crab.

Immediately, a brief cloud of golden sparks appeared in front of her, the huge shelled creature coming into existence in the middle of it with the standard spawning animation. Akatsuki blinked at it as it spun towards her, immediately on the attack. She yelped, jumping far further back than she needed to as a strong pincer sliced through the air to grab at her. She was still tense, very jumpy. Perhaps this would be a good way to wind down.

Akatsuki idly hopped over its attacks, gazing into the void-like black masses that were its eyes, raised a short ways above the shell. The creature was an intimidating size, at least that of a large wolf or even a small bear, though its low intelligence and predictability made up for its high defence, making it a trivial enemy. They also tasted delicious - especially the smaller ones, according to Nyanta.

There were a number of options above it as she selected modify entity - HP, defence, attack power, speed, drop rate, XP, and so on. One in particular caught her eye - size.

Akatsuki frowned at the thought, her mind winding further and further down a line of tangents as she met distraction after distraction, making a leap backwards to distance herself from the creature. As it began to trundle towards her, she experimentally reached out to tweak the size option upwards.

The result was immediately obvious - it shot up in size, doubling, tripling in a mere few seconds. Akatsuki gulped and quickly withdrew her hand as the crusted monster the size of a large horse-drawn carriage lumbered towards her. It was still not a fast creature - the movement of its legs was slow and awkward, but even so, it was an intimidating sight.

She just couldn't help it. Just another tweak upwards, to see what would happen.

Predictably, it grew. It grew to the size of a small house. A watchtower. The Log Horizon guild building. Akatsuki squinted, wondering when it would stop and reach the limit as its enormous frame continued to expand, still carrying itself towards her in an aggressive manner - rough, spiked legs punctured the ground, leaving significant indents as its weight bore into the grass, staring down at her with the amplified fury of a simple crab.

It just didn't stop. Eventually, the desperate dug in the back of Akatsuki's mind caused her to stop, but things had quickly become absurd. It was greater than a full manor, or the castle of a city with its keep in the centre. Waves of dust flew about its legs, pits large enough to be dungeons themselves left behind whenever it took a step. An ominous, deep hissing noise cut through the scenery from the monster's direction as it continued its march. Akatsuki's meagre back-treading seemed meaningless as its eyes bore into her from far, far above - each eye larger than houses.

Her heart pounded as it raised a colossal arm with exaggerated sluggishness, bringing its full volume down straight towards her as though the sky was falling. Akatsuki panicked, activating each and every one of her abilities to get her out of there faster as her logical mind took a back seat. Within seconds she had escaped with hundreds of meters to spare, spinning to look behind her where the creature was still bringing its arm down, far too slow to have responded to her movement already.

The force of its arm broke into the ground like a mounting cracking, or the great glaciers coming apart and dropping their titan payloads into the cold, vast ocean - the ground trembled, new crevices and ruptures breaking across its surface as a tidal wave of soil and uprooted plants covered the valley.

It was mind-blowing. Terrifying, yet beautiful - like the first time she'd ever played the game, the first time she'd entered a dungeon as a complete newbie only to find a boss monster that dwarfed the largest enemies she'd met so far. The thrill and adrenaline she'd known as she could scale the boss's body and arrive half way up at the waist, only to look down and grow nervous from vertigo.

The crab dwarfed those monster more still - they would appear as a blurred dark spot against the hill-like ridges upon its shell.

Her instincts kicked in as the crab began to raise its arm from the ground. She took off at a sprint, activating her tracker skills again and darting at insane speeds up onto the top of the grounded claw, the world below only a sea of blurred motion too far away to make out any details besides the line of forestry against the plains. Her eyes darted up and she started running up its arm, towards the dark overhang where it met the shell. Its dark eyes followed her all the while, passionate and loathing, though often behind her as her darting movements between the ridges and bumps of the surface were too fast for it to keep up.

Suddenly, wind was whipping against her face and robe, her trailing dramatically behind her. Her blood shot insistently through her muscles, breaths now coming out as laboured behind the great incline she'd followed. The arm was lifting up from the ground now, the clouds around her creating a misty scene and partially obscuring her vision. The other arm was moving too, preparing to attempt to swat her off itself or even squash it completely. She was honestly surprised it cared about her at all, but all she had done was grow a simple hostile creature. Still - its realism was astonishing.

She was getting the hang of it now - the looming shadow of the approaching arm above her as though the crust of the earth was turning in on itself grew closer, but slowly. She forced her legs to work harder, carrying her up to the edge of the main body - she was still scrambling atop it when she felt the impact as one arm hit the other where she had been climbing short moments ago.

She fell to the ground, firmly gripping whatever handholds she could as the whole landscape seemed to tilt, gravity pointing her to the side as the first arm was hoisted downwards by the impact of the other. She continued climbing forwards, the incline so steep it felt like a cliff before it began to slowly return to its alignment.

With one last burst of tracker speed, she darted up to the centre of the body, pausing to catch her breath and watch the scene. She had plenty of time before the crab could move one of its arms up to try to attack her again, so she sat down.

The world below looked as though she had climbed a mountain. Other, snow-covered peaks loomed both above and below her in the distance. The air had grown cold, as it did when she rode gryphons with her lord.

Good god, she could almost see Akihabara from here. The snap back to reality hit her hard, and she opened her eyes to see the wall of claw hurtling towards her to her side, growing closer each second. Enough was enough, she decided, and began to reduce the crab's size.

She wasn't ready for the speed at which it was reduced - it didn't seem to care or even notice what was happening to it as the ground below her fell faster than she did, leaving her hurtling towards it for a second before slamming down on top of it, ninja deftness keeping her on her feet. After crawling out of the way of its attack, she edged the size down slowly, bit by bit, keeping a careful grip on the shell. After minutes had passed she found herself hopping a small distance back onto the grassland below, and facing the normal-sized crab in front of her. Normal for a supposedly giant crab, she inwardly noted.

Finally, at the bottom of its entity menu there was a small delete icon. Akatsuki gave it a short smile as if reverent of what she now saw in it as it mindlessly continued towards her, before pressing the button and watching it puff away into nowhere just before it reached her.

She let out a heavy breath, the destruction around her catching her eyes. There was a long trail of growing spiked ditches in the grassland, the largest of which a short distance from her. She gulped, approaching its edge and staring down into its depths, black with mud and fog with the sun so far above it.

"Crap," she muttered, noting several dozen of these, though they weren't all so large.

It was time to go back to the guildhall. Shiroe was probably awake by now.


	6. Talk

It was the nature of a secret that made her nervous when there was a commotion about the guildhall again when she returned. Despite the line of new visitors that Akatsuki wasn't aware that they would be having, passing crate after crate of bean buns from the guild hall's main building, the mess of delicious treats hadn't diminished much.

She quickly recognised Calasin of Shopping District 8 organising the effort, chastising the workers for taking buns from the crates to eat down the line - she followed it down with her eyes and noticed four large horse-drawn carriages. She doubted that they would be enough, but clearly he had made some kind of deal with Shiroe to invest in mass - either Shiroe would invest in as many production guilds as he needed to get information, or Calasin had taken it as an opportunity for cheap stock. Either way, it wasn't much Akatsuki's concern and, despite her role in it, she wasn't worried about the business. It would be pleasant to have access to the bottom floor and main entrance of the guildhall, after all.

After the merchant regarded her with a nod, Akatsuki stepped through the main door for the first time in several days, noticing that most of the room was now stacked with crates, brimming with the buns, only about a quarter left in disarray, where other workers were still packing them up along with Naotsugu and Touya. It seemed like most of the work had already been done.

"Akatsuki, there you are," came a familiar smooth voice. She spun around to see Nyanta on the floor above, stepping down the stairs towards her. Behind him, she noticed Shiroe emerging from his office with a number of scrolls. Nyanta followed her eyes. "Don't worry, Shiroe's up and running again," he spoke. "He's been talking to Calasin all day since he got up, hoping for something more than Michitaka could provide, but no such luck so far I'm afraid." Akatsuki blinked, watching as Nyanta reached her floor. "I do hope Shiroe can make something of this. It'll irritate him to no end if he doesn't, you know."

"I know," Akatsuki nodded guiltily.

"Anyway, we could do with a hand with these boxes. Minori was here a short while ago but she's off practising her scribe skills and we're behind schedule."

"Sure, yeah," Akatsuki responded slowly, glancing to the side to get a better look at the disarray. "Is Shiroe okay?" She asked. Nyanta sighed.

"He didn't sleep much, I think, but he's taking it in his stride as he always does. I can see he's more worried than normal, however. Let's hurry up with these crates and get it out of the way. He's got Roderick Firm coming over tomorrow."

"Thought so," Akatsuki nodded, quickly hopping towards the piles to get to work.

"Ahoy, cavalry's here!" Naotsugu grinned, spotting Akatsuki as Touya did. "What she lacks in size, she makes up for in speed-" He tried to joke but was cut off by a swift kick to the face.

"Good of you to join us," the younger warrior sighed, accustomed to their antics by now.

"Just wanna lend a hand," Akatsuki mumbled. _Fix my mistake_ , she inwardly corrected herself.

The buns were remarkably puffy despite their days, and she almost regretted having to cram them all into crates. It was a dull activity, but not an enormous one - with only a fraction of the room left and a large workforce, it didn't take too long before they were picking up the last few buns. Akatsuki paused to scan the messy wooden floor, now densely covered in crumbs.

"Hey Touya," Naotsugu spoke. "Remember Shiroe wanted to keen a couple crates. He says it's for the Roderick Firm but I reckon it's just cause he gets hungry in the night," he joked. "Nyanta always knows when there's one less dish than there was in the evening."

Akatsuki smiled, distracted. She was surprised that Nyanta hadn't made more of the event - he was no Shiroe but he was very astute. He controlled his emotions well though - he could be as panicked as her right now.

"Atatsuki's back?" Came another voice from above, and instantly that panic settled back in tenfold.

"Tetora?" Akatsuki asked, stepping back to see the ever-cheery idol looking down at her with a completely mystified expression.

"Can we talk?" Tetora asked. Akatsuki blinked, then hesitantly nodded.

"Um, yeah-"

"Right, meet me upstairs. Your room," the idol instructed, disappearing again. His tone was bright, but the song in it was gone. Something was wrong.

Akatsuki huffed but complied quickly, racing up and into the familiar space. Seconds later, the idol appeared in the door frame, not in the least

surprised that she was already there, and shut the door behind him. Akatsuki met his eyes.

Tetora stepped forwards, reaching into his pocket to pull out a small item - unfamiliar but Akatsuki had seen it before. Then she remembered - she had made it that very morning. She stepped back as he continued towards her, then placed it carefully on the table she had been stood next to.

"What in..." Tetora uncharacteristically faltered. "What... Is... That item?" He asked very quietly. Scared. Akatsuki's heart sank with dread.

"It's just..." She gulped. "I don't know, it... What's wrong with it?"

"What's wrong with it?" Tetora replied, spinning to face her before pointing a rigid finger at it. "Did you not test it?"

Akatsuki paused.

"Just a little bit... All I did was add some fake abilities..." She hazarded, each second her heartbeat growing more intense. "I didn't want to increase my health or anything, because people would get suspicious-"

"Where did you find this?" He asked insistently, eyeing the object as though it were about to kill them.

"Please, just tell me what went wrong," Akatsuki pleaded, meeting his eyes. Tetora nodded.

"Right. Say I wanted to make it look like an ability had no cooldown," he explained, picking the item up and inputting the text. He opened his menu, displaying his most powerful healing spell whose cooldown timer had just been reduced to 0 seconds." Akatsuki nodded.

Tetora cast the spell, a stunning array of colours exploding between the two. They were both on full health, so nothing happened. Then Tetora immediately cast it again. Then again. Akatsuki watched as the idol cast the high tier spell over and over again, a dozen times a second, before it finally came to a stop and a deafening silence fell between the two.

"It's not just a vanity item," Tetora whispered, quickly resetting the cooldown back to its normal time. "It... It can do anything. Anything." Akatsuki didn't speak. "This could turn a coin into a trillion coins and destabilize the economy, or make someone's fireball spell strong enough to murder all the people of the land on the entire server... Could you use it to move through servers? Could you use it to get out of..."

Akatsuki was frozen.

"Level with me here," the idol continued. "Please. Because there's no way this was a monster drop. I don't mean to make you look like the bad guy, I'm just really, really freaked out. What on Earth is this thing?"

Akatsuki nodded again, then shuffled back to sit on the bed.

"I..." She breathed. "You're not going to believe me."

"After seeing this, I think I'll believe quite a lot," Tetora responded.

"I glitched out of the map," Akatsuki blurted. There was a long pause. "I glitched out of the map in that solo dungeon and found a big console out of bounds. I pressed a button and suddenly the game tells me I'm... an admin."

Tetora blinked.

"Admin?"

"I don't know!" Akatsuki huffed, hiding her face. "I-

"And you didn't tell anyone?" Tetora's eyes were slowly widening he slowly came to believe it.

"I got back and everyone wanted to know about the dungeon boss!" Akatsuki cried. "I tried to talk to Shiroe but people kept interrupting, and one thing led to the next, and then..."

"The bean buns," Tetora clicked. Akatsuki brought her knees up to her chest. "That was you?"

"Yes that was me," she spoke quietly. "It was an accident."

"And this thing," Tetora nodded towards the small device.

"I made it," Akatsuki answered. There was a long pause. "Every second, I think about telling Shiroe. I keep going to his room and... It's obviously the only move to make, he's, you know... But..."

"But you want to confess your feelings to him and that's making things harder."

Akatsuki didn't respond apart from curling up a little tighter.

"Akatsuki," he sighed sadly.

"Just forget about that. No one cares about that," she huffed. "That doesn't matter, right? It's all just excuses. I don't know why I haven't-"

"I'm not angry at you," Tetora interrupted her. "I know how hard it can be to get things off your chest. Especially to the people you love. And I can imagine how freaked out _you_ were when this all started."

"I'm sorry," Akatsuki blurted, silencing the idol. "This is so dumb. All I've done is make buns and freeze time and creep around, and whatever else sounds fun-"

"Freeze time?" Tetora's mouth was agape. Akatsuki nodded.

"I mean, what's even the point in keeping it secret? And what if I tell Shiroe? There's no option to leave the game or anything. It's just so easy to feel special."

"Don't be like this," Tetora shook his had, crossing her forearms in front of him. "This hasn't changed you. If you're special now, you were special before." Akatsuki hesitated. "And you haven't done anything wrong. You're just struggling towards an awkward conversation. You're scared each moment waiting will make it worse but, to be honest, there's really no harm done right?" He met her eyes. "Talk to Shiroe. The sooner the better."

Akatsuki hesitated.

"Right," she nodded. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Tetora grinned.

With that, movement from the window caught their attention. Both of them glanced outside to where a man was approaching the guild building with speed - a member of Shopping District 8 by the looks of things. He looked worried.

Akatsuki and Tetora met eyes and stood quickly, darting down the stairs where they arrived on the now empty ground floor as the man burst through the door, startling Shiroe and Calasin.

"News from the plains!" He cried. "Our scouts came back to the guild before realising you were here..."

"What?" Calasin asked. "What is it?"

"The mountains, sir. People are saying they saw the mountains moving."


End file.
